


A Rambling Analysis of Troll Romance and the Complexities of the Human Concept of "Love"

by blue_warbler



Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Essays, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Philosophy, Rants, The Four Loves, Troll Romance (Homestuck), obviously no beta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28142364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_warbler/pseuds/blue_warbler
Summary: In which I stay up too late reading Homestuck and philosophy, get a terrible idea, and then proceed to write 1300 words on it.  I'd say "enjoy," but I'm not sure that's possible.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	A Rambling Analysis of Troll Romance and the Complexities of the Human Concept of "Love"

All right boys and girls, buckle your fuckles, it’s time for another Stupid Essay with Blue_Warbler.This time I’m mixing some confusing webcomic with classical philosophy, because my interests are hideously diverse.

Anyway, I’m talking about Homestuck because I’m on a Homestuck kick right now for no discernible reason.Specifically, I’m discussing the four quadrants of troll romance and comparing them with the Four Loves of classical philosophy, especially as described in the inimitable C.S. Lewis’s book of the same name.

I’m gonna start off by assuming y’all already know what troll romance is like.You got to this page by clicking through the Homestuck/Hiveswap tag, so you know what you’re here for.It’s less certain that you know what the Four Loves are, so I’ll explain them here:

  * First up is _Storge_ , AKA familial love.The classic example of this is parental — a mother or father to his or her child, for example — but it’s just as present between siblings or even between non-family, who are so close as to be essentially found family.Storge is by far the most important of the four loves, to the point that a lack of it, or feeling like you don’t need it, is medically alarming.Children with absent or neglectful parents, who do not give storge, tend not to develop right, or, if they’re young enough, even die from it.
  * Next, we have _Philia_ , AKA friendship, or brotherly love.Philadelphia was named after this, hence the “city of brotherly love” moniker.This is a bond formed based on shared interests, activities, or circumstances.It’s by far the most diverse, and often found in groups, with philia bonds forming between friend groups at a school, particularly gregarious coworkers, military squads, regulars at a bar, and even particularly light-hearted rivals.It’s easy to mistake a strong philia bond for an outright romantic one, but the two are very much distinct.A good example of strong philia would be the relationship between Frodo and Sam, or for a Homestuck example, the [[[canonical]]] relationship between John and Dave.
  * _Eros_ , AKA romantic love, is what most people think of when they think of “love.”I doubt I need to fully explain this one, but I do need to clarify a couple things.First of all, eros and sexuality are not necessarily inherently tied.It’s possible to be in love with someone without any sexual thoughts.Often (or so I’ve heard — having never experienced it for myself, this is all secondhand) the daily life of a loving couple is less “constant sex” and more “constant shenanigans that are clearly romantic in nature.”
  * Last, but the exact opposite of least, is _Agape_ , AKA unconditional or sacrificial love.Agape isn’t so much an emotion on its own as it is a conscious decision to put another person’s good before your own.While the other three are equal in “meaningfulness,” agape is a perfection of love, to the point that some people define love as a whole as agape.In its most meaningful form, agape sacrifices one’s life — a parent running into a burning building to rescue their child, saving the child’s life at the cost of their own, is an example of Agape perfecting storge.Uniquely, agape does not necessarily need to be directed towards a person — someone willing to die for an ideal also displays agape.To clarify, however, it is not necessarily believing the good of someone no matter what — agape could be displayed just as perfectly towards a criminal who the one loving agrees must be locked away or even killed.



Hussie, in the page where he describes troll romance in detail, does love dirty by saying the following:

“ **Humans have only one form of romance. And though we consider it a complicated subject, spanning a wide range of emotions, social conventions, and implications for reproduction, it is ultimately a superficial slice of what trolls consider the full body of romantic experience. Our concept of romance, in spite of its capacity to fill our art and literature and to rule our individual destinies like little else, is still just that. A single, linear concept. A concept usually denoted by a single symbol: <3.”**

As you can see, the mistake here is assuming that love, which he so concisely describes with the symbol “<3”, is limited to romance — or, as will be discussed soon, assuming that troll “romance” is parallel in any way to the human concept of the same name.

Now, to get to the actual meat of this “essay,” and what you’re actually here for: a philosophical analysis of troll romance.I’ll go quadrant by quadrant.

  * Matespritship is often mistaken for eros, even by the webcomic itself at times.However, I believe it goes a little deeper than that, simply because matespritship is distinct from moirallegience.A well-balanced eros relationship contains both the blatant romance described in troll romance as flushed and the mutual balance described as pale, while in troll romance the two are separate.Therefore, if you, dear reader, will permit me some minor anthropocentric smugness, human eros is not only distinct from, but more meaningful than matespritship.
  * Moirallegience has already been partially described in the above paragraph, and so I suppose I have properly dissuaded the mistake of equating moirallegiance to philia.If anything, it more closely resembles outright non-sexual eros (yet another reason eros isn’t matespritship — matespritship is inherently sexual), but also incorporates aspects of philia and even storge.As a side note, philia itself, as a basic concept, also exists as a part of troll relationship mechanics — Hussie explicitly differentiates “true moirallegence” and “the usual variety of platonic involvement.”



All four of these concepts — matespritship, moirallegiance, eros, and philia — can be lumped together in a mess of tangled comparisons that easily explain why Hussie said “ **Trolls exist in a state of almost perpetual confusion and generally have no idea what the hell is going on.”** A troll, observing an eros bond, would likely be highly confused, as it possesses aspects of both red quadrants and yet somehow does not involve the general confusion of quadrant vacillation.I, really comparing the red quadrants for the first time, had similar confusion, except it was on why they were insisting the two aspects were separate. 

  * Auspiticism is, simply put, not romance.What trolls describe as romance feels more like a simple, natural third-party negotiation in human terms.Auspiticism, not matespritship, is the quadrant which actually happens to humans (beyond cases of philia-verging-on-storge that could be described as moirallegiance if you tilt your head right and aren’t smart enough to not discuss Homestuck in public), simply because it’s natural for someone to get between two people trying to start a fight and to try and get them to stop.
  * Kismesis has absolutely no parallels to human love, simply because even the troll concept of hate has nothing to do with love even if you’re mistaken about it.Yes, I said that rivals can be an example of philia, but from the kismesis we’ve seen in the comic and other Homestuck media, all but the absolute mildest, verging-on-regular-friendship kismesis is mutant hate, not brotherly love borne from the spirit of healthy competition.For humans, hate (not mere dislike) is specifically the opposite of agape — just as agape is putting someone else’s good before your own, hate is putting someone else’s harm before your own good.True hate is sacrificial as well, but it’s dedicated to bringing someone else to ruin (“taking someone down with you” is a good example of this), and is _always, without exception, harmful_.There’s a reason that the saying “before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves” exists. 



A side note on storge: trolls don’t seem to have it, outside of some limited fondness for lusii.Perhaps that has something to do with why everything is so confusing for them, or maybe it’s just a natural result of their being an oviparous species.I dunno, I’m a philosopher, not an evolutionary psychologist.

Anyway, this has been rantier than usual, even by my standards.I can only hope some other idiots on this site will appreciate my ramblings.


End file.
